Why do Social­ists (includ­ing the Left) hate this phrase so much? More specif­i­cally, why do they accuse any­one who uses it of spout­ing “empty rhetoric?” As if the words don’t have any mean­ing beyond their polit­i­cal his­tory? The phrase was coined by the AMA back in the ‘30s when it opposed Medicare. The AMA was a very strong oppo­nent of Medicare, and (rightly) asso­ci­ated the pro­gram with Social­ism. Social­ism was, itself, deeply reviled at the time, some­times for less than legit­i­mate rea­sons (see, e.g., those god­less com­mies). For some rea­son, mod­ern Left­ists (who are really Social­ists, all) fly into a spit­ting fury if [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Before watch­ing The Golden Com­pass, I got to sit through lots of ads and trail­ers. Cit­i­zen Sol­dier The National Guard has a new and appallingly bad recruit­ing cam­paign, fea­tur­ing a (com­mis­sioned?) “song” and “music video” by allegedly “pop­u­lar” alter­na­tive rock band, 3 Doors Down. The video, which is over four min­utes long, cuts between shots of the band per­form­ing on a blasted heath under a tene­brous sky (com­plete with bad, fake anamor­phic lens flare), shots of National Guard sol­diers help­ing recov­ery efforts in a dis­as­ter area of uncer­tain ori­gin and local­ity (com­plete with obnox­ious nar­row shut­ter effect, a.k.a. the Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan Effect), and shots of [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Warn­ers made a boo-​​​​boo. Photo c/​​o

Accord­ing to the AP, Gillian Gib­bons has been placed safely on a plane out of Sudan, bound for home. More as story devel­ops. Update: Ms. Gib­bons was appar­ently par­doned by Sudan Pres­i­dent Omar al-​​​​Bashir after two Mus­lim mem­bers of the UK House of Lords flew to Sudan to nego­ti­ate on her behalf. She was par­doned and released to the British embassy in Khar­toum, where­after she was booked on every pos­si­ble flight out of Khar­toum, for secu­rity pur­poses. She was taken to the air­port in an unmarked car and flew to Dubai, where she boarded a flight to Heathrow. She is due to [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...